Past Event

Craig  As the final night of the 2013 football season approaches in Craig, another dominant opponent is on the way, but the Moffat County football team isn’t changing its approach.

The 2-7 Bulldogs will host the 8-1 Palisade Bulldogs on Friday at the Bulldog Proving Grounds. The 7 p.m. game will double as senior night for Moffat County. While the last home game for Moffat County, Oct. 18’s homecoming game vs. Montezuma-Cortez, felt like a potential win that went wrong, this time Moffat will enter as the largest of underdogs.

Palisade leads Class 3A in wildcard points, the Colorado High School Activities Association’s calculation of which teams are most deserving of entering the playoffs. They are ranked second in the CHSAA poll behind undefeated Coronado.

“They’re the best team in the state,” head coach Kip Hafey said. “And this is a school that’s going up (a classification) next year, and we’re going down. They’re more than twice our size. That’s what we’re up against.”

But the Western Slope League is full of playoff teams this year, and Moffat County is ready to go come out and play tough again, regardless of the outcome.

“We go out and play to win,” Hafey said. “That’s how you do it in a tough game like this. You play hard and then you can look at yourself in the mirror after the game and you have nothing to hang your head about. We’re going to play to honor our seniors.”

Palisade operates out of a running attack led by quarterback Levi Hoaglund and tailback Dalton Hannigan, both of whom have more than 1,000 yards rushing this season.

“Their quarterback is the best running back we’ve seen,” Hafey said. “He’s extremely fast and makes people miss. They run a lot of option with him.”

To make things more difficult, Moffat County will be without starting tight end and defensive end Philip Chadwick, who injured his foot against Battle Mountain. But senior Sheldon Greenwood wants to approach this game from a one-on-one standpoint, all across the field.

“We want to win our personal battles,” Greenwood said. “Beat the guy across from you, and then good things can happen.”

In the last game of their careers, the seniors want to go out on as high a note as they can to finish off a disappointing season. There’s one surefire way for them to do that.

“We want to do the best we can do, and if the game goes in our favor, then it does,” senior Tyler Gerber said. “We’ll have to wait and find out.”